What to think about before you create a website:

To create ones own website is not an easy task but not impossible neither. To create it you need two things; a hosting company and a domain. Hosting companies are the people providing you with the space to build your web page in and they even set up email accounts for you and are their to support you whenever you need help. A domain is more like the office where your website will sit.

First of all you need to decide what your site will be called before you can purchase your domain name [yourname.com/net/org].Choosin g the right domain name of your site is much more important than you might think.

For example: A person wants to start a website about cooking recipes and or services. So it goes without saying that it's really a good idea to sit and think about how people will find this person's site. If someone was looking for recipes they would go to Google or Yahoo or some search engine and they would type "recipes" or "cooking services" or some cooking related keywords or phrases.

Some people are tempted to name their domains after their business or personal names and register a domain like AB-Enterprises.com. If you want people to find you through search engines then this is not a good name for your domain, is it? However, if you want many people to find your site when they go to Google or any of the search engines, then I would recommend that you get a domain name that contains at least the keywords that you'd like to be found with.

I also made this very same mistake with my first site and really learned the hard way. It was a blog about shopping tips site and I named it after my nick name. Not very bright, was it? And of course no one is going to find my site by searching for my nick name; they'd find me by searching for what they need. "Shopping", "shopping advice", etc. So instead of using a site with my name, I should have used something like shoppingtips.com or something like that.

Many of the search engines really put lots of emphasis on your domain name when they display their search results, so it's important to include your keywords within if possible.
So using the above given example of the person that wants to create a site about cooking services, a good domain for this person would be "cookingservices.com" or "recipesforyou.com" (assuming that's what their site will be about).

So just remember this one important tip; that your domain name should ALWAYS reflect the theme of your web site if you want searchers to find you. Domain names aren't everything or the only thing when it comes to getting found on the web, but they sure help when they describe the content of your site.

Learn more about this author, Marie Heyns.
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